When a cow dies in India, a very particular group of funeral crashers arrives on the scene to mourn. They’re the worst kind of guests, more interested in dining than in the deceased; worse still, they arrive in a mob and turn a wake into a banquet.

While diclofenac was identified by many as the sole cause of the rapid declines of vultures populations, the solution wouldn’t be as simple as banning the drug. The general life history of vultures makes them particularly vulnerable to this sort of event; the raptors have a low reproductive rate and take a long time to mature compared to other birds. Though banning the drug would reduce the deaths, the populations would take years to recover.

And unfortunately for vultures, a ban on diclofenac didn’t come fast enough to stem the losses. A paper published in 2007 found that populations of Oriental white-backed vultures in central and northern India had declined 99.9% in the period from 1992-2007; the same paper estimated that the long-billed vulture suffered a loss of 96.8% of its original populations during the same span of time. In some regions of India, vultures became functionally extinct, meaning that the population could no longer perform the vital services it once used to. Vultures remained on the landscape, but their numbers had dwindled to a level where they no longer had an impact.

With the breeding population of adult vultures swiftly plummeting, the reproductive success of the birds declined as well. In a 2006 study, a team of researchers couldn’t find a single viable nest at one of their Pakistan survey sites, a colony that had once hosted nearly 200 nests. Other sites had significant declines as well; one, for example, had lost over half of the nests it had once boasted by 2003.

The events that unfolded in India and Pakistan provide a cautionary tale about the vital role of vultures in the landscape, illustrating through disease that the loss of vulture populations has detrimental impacts on ecosystems worldwide. Vultures, being obligate scavengers, are the most effective creature known when it comes to cleaning corpses, capable of completely removing the flesh from the skeleton. As vulture populations decline, the amount of carrion on the landscape increases due to incomplete disposal and a shortage of scavengers. This in turn leads to environmental pollution as carcasses rot; in particular, rotting carrion pollutes waterways, therefore decreasing available clean drinking water for humans and animals alike and promoting the spread of disease.

Additionally, other organisms begin to fill the role that the vultures no longer can, which leads to shifts in community structure. In particular, a 2012 paper noted that the loss of vultures leads to more mammal species coming into contact at corpses, which leads to the spread of disease between species and individuals. Both the increased availability of carrion for scavenger species and the spread of disease between populations has the potential to lead to population fluxes that further alter the interactions between ecological communities.

Particularly in India, feral dogs often rise to fill the role that the vultures once held. As the populations of feral dogs increase, so do dog bites, which cause rabies incidences to skyrocket. India in particular already sees 36% of the world’s rabies deaths each year, with most of the victims being under 15 years old. This number is projected to increase as vulture populations continue to plummet. The increase in the dog population, along with the increase in the number of both rabies cases, has been projected to cost the Indian government $1.5 billion annually when one considers the costs of visiting a doctor and paying for a vaccine, along with the cost of human life.

Furthermore, vultures eat carrion before it can become a breeding ground for bacteria and infectious diseases and prevent these toxins from seeping into waterways and soil. In particular, vultures help to minimize the spread of anthrax by quickly ingesting carrion and preventing human contact with rotting meat. Markandya et al. also note that vultures reduce the spread of livestock diseases such as tuberculosis and brucellosis, therefore preventing the loss of livestock and human life.

While we may not think of vultures as being particularly beneficial to us as humans—and yes, we may even the route of Darwin and mock the unsightly mismatch of their bald heads and ragged, feathered napes—it’s important to recognize the often unseen benefits of their presence on the landscape. Vulture conservation is a worthwhile endeavor that’s valued in Nepal at $6.9 million dollars; rescuing vultures will reduce the spread of disease and prevent the loss of human lives, money, and productivity.

A vital component of revitalizing Asia’s vulture populations will likely be captive breeding programs that will allow birds to be raised to maturity and then released back into the environment. The Indian government already supports a captive breeding plan; it will be vital for other countries to adopt similar programs in order to help raptor populations recover. The process of restoring the population to its previous ubiquity will likely be slow and rely on the cooperation of different governments in order to ensure diclofenac remains out of the environment, but will help ensure the health of environments and communities.

After all, if there are no vultures, then who will attend the scavenger’s funeral?

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This blog is a forum for student writers, activists, and organizers at the Rochester Institute of Technology hosted by the Student Environmental Action League (SEAL.) SEAL was founded in 1995 and has been educating, and organizing in support of our shared environment ever since. If you'd like you have your work shared through our blog reach out to club.rit.seal@gmail.com
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